ADDICTIONS DEFY EASY, LASTING FIX

A sad irony undercuts the pair of stories about drug use in Sunday's edition.

In the local article, we learned that the Benton County Sheriff's
Office and the Corvallis Police Department have banded together to
form another drug task force, primarily to target methamphetamine
use. You don't have to convince us that meth is a plague that infects
all around it. From the destruction of children's' lives to property
values, meth use poisons our community.

The second article was about a promising new drug (a vaccine,
actually) that promises to help drug addicts, smokers and over-eaters
get control of their obsessions.

As tempting as it is to be jubilant about the vaccine and see the
banding of the agencies as a positive step, we have to ask: What's
wrong with this picture, when the most promising solution to
substance abuse is the development of yet another substance?

The National Institutes of Drug are touting the promise of an
experimental vaccine that could help addicts of all sorts kick their
habits. To shortcut a long, scientific explanation of how they work,
let's note that cigarettes don't taste good to smokers; cocaine
doesn't produce the same high to snorters, and over-eaters finally
have a functional signal in their brain that tells them when they
aren't hungry anymore.

The trouble with both the stepped-up drug effort and the vaccine, as
we see it, is that neither addresses the underlying reasons why
people abuse drugs and other substances in the first place -- they
want to numb their lives in various ways.

The fix for that is much harder, but we're presented here with an
irony, as a possible solution to drug abuse appears to be use of
other drugs -- or vaccines.

The vaccine sounds promising, for those who are inclined to seek a change.

But we can't help noting that many addicts -- whether they're
addicted to cigarettes, meth or fast food -- are not so inclined.

Even more depressing, the failure rate of such addicts is fairly
high, proving that recovery often is not forever. (Just ask former
Partridge kid and frequent cocaine user Danny Bonaduce or yo-yo
dieter Oprah Winfrey).

We must do what we can, but facing the big elephant in the room
regarding substance abuse means admitting that addicts need to want
to stop. For those who don't, jail or vaccines will only delay
substance; they won't offer the permanent cure they we hope for.